


Broken Foundation

by JayceCarter



Series: Random Fallout Shenanigans [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family, Friendship, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 03:53:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10563144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayceCarter/pseuds/JayceCarter
Summary: A quiet evening where Shaun talks to the only family he's ever known, no matter how dysfunctional they are.





	

Shaun drank his coffee, the mug warming his hands that were always cold now. Age did that, he guessed, it sucked everything healthy out of a person. He used to run the hallways in shorts, go department to department in almost nothing as a child, but now he layered clothing to keep the shivers at bay.

 

At least his companion didn’t push him to talk. They sat like this, overlooking the institute before bed, often. It was like surveying what they built. Shaun by genetics, Kellogg by viciousness. It had started when Shaun was still a child, when Kellogg would check in on him between missions, and they’d watch over the commotion until Shaun fell asleep. In some ways, the man was the closest thing to family Shaun had. At least, he used to be.

 

“Do you ever wonder what could have been?” Shaun’s voice filled the space, used to giving orders, but unused to just talking.

 

“Why would I? Shit doesn’t change, not really. We just fuck up until we die.”

 

Yeah, he’d say that. Kellogg was not an optimist. Sometimes Shaun imagined being saved by someone else, by someone who could have been like a father, someone who would have held him, coddled him, loved him. Kellogg lacked the basic emotions to do it, tainted by whatever in his own past had hardened him, turned him into whatever this was. Was he even really alive anymore? Maybe once you replace enough of you with cybernetics, you stopped living. Though, from what he saw in the files, Kellogg had been the same cold man for years before they started augmenting him.

 

But it had been Kellogg, and despite the scientists’ attempts, they never really gave him that family he’d craved. For all Kellogg’s coldness, he was Shaun’s foundation, the base he built himself on top of. So he’d waited his childhood for every time Kellogg returned from a mission, like a kid whose father went off to war, waiting for some bobble Kellogg might return with as proof that he thought about the kid when he was away.

 

Shaun had those things lined on his bookshelf still, trophies that proved someone cared, no matter how little or how strange. Comics, toys, little pieces of the commonwealth that meant more than anything to Shaun, to a boy who had nothing of his birth home.

 

Of course, there was someone now, wasn’t there? His mother had stumbled from that vault yesterday. She probably laid dying somewhere, shocking awake into a world she didn’t know nor understand. Shaun couldn’t survive up there, why did he think a woman out of time could?

 

But he needed this. He lacked any family, any connection, and now, at the end of his life, he wanted to know. Would she find him? Would she care at all for the child stolen from her? Shaun, a boy who had been so wanted for his DNA but so uncared for as a person, he wanted someone to need him, to cross anything to reach him.

 

“Do you think-“ Shaun stopped the question. Don’t ask questions you don’t want an answer to, and he knew he didn’t want the answer to it, not from the merc.

 

“Come on, out with it.” Kellogg released a lungful of smoke.

 

“Do you think my mother would have been proud of me? If she saw me now, if she somehow found me, do you think she’d be proud?”

 

Kellogg put out his cigarette in the ashtray and stood. Shaun didn’t think he’d even answer him, not that it would have surprised him. Kellogg lacked any sort of social graces, the sort that said to lie to a person when such a delicate question was posed.

 

Instead, Kellogg set his hand on Shaun’s shoulder and squeezed, hard enough Shaun was reminded that while he was aging and nearing death, Kellogg had a hell of a long time left with all his tech. “I think she’d be about as proud as I am.”

 

The words that would have been praise to anyone else cut Shaun exactly as Kellogg had to have meant them to.

 

Kellogg wasn’t proud. He didn’t gloat over the boy he’d saved, over the man that boy had turned into. He hated what Shaun had become, nothing but the top of a machine he didn’t care for. They’d never seen eye to eye, and now there wasn’t time to believe they ever would.

 

“Of course,” Shaun said, voice soft. “I fear these talks of ours are coming to an end, soon. The doctors aren’t giving me much more time. I’m sure you won’t miss them, won’t think on them after I’m gone, but, thank you anyway.”

 

“Every dynasty has to topple, huh?”

 

“So it seems. Goodnight, Kellogg.”

 

Kellogg released Shaun’s shoulder. Just when Shaun was sure he’d left, he returned with a second, fresh cup of coffee. He said nothing as he set it in front of Shaun, taking the old one that had grown cold away. Kellogg then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small toy car, the sort he used to bring back to Shaun after missions when Shaun was little.

 

He set it on the table beside the cup, like an apology for the truth. “Goodnight, Shaun.”


End file.
